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Asked: 2025-03-26 16:38:15 +0800 CST

How can I distinguish different python processes in top? Or how can I see which python processes eat all my CPU?

  • 772

currently top of top looks more or less like this:

    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                              
 160932 username  20   0  236684 222504   6912 R  99,3   0,7  58:14.16 python3                                                                                              
   6353 username  20   0  633904 523992   6656 R  99,0   1,6     13,39 python3                                                                                              
  18092 username  20   0  393320 369180  11264 R  39,4   1,1 154:58.37 python3                                                                                              
 149778 username  20   0 3975792 800884 301444 S  14,6   2,4  18:42.82 firefox                                                                                              
 168196 username  20   0 2544432 181284 112904 S   7,0   0,6   0:08.15 Isolated Web Co                                                                                      
   2065 root      20   0 1547428 353628 258444 S   3,3   1,1  63:27.48 Xorg                                                                                                 
   3103 mateusz   20   0 1206696 104704  39056 S   0,7   0,3   1:19.68 lxqt-panel                                                                                           
     53 root     -51   0       0      0      0 S   0,3   0,0   7:51.72 irq/9-acpi                                                                                           
    834 root     -51   0       0      0      0 S   0,3   0,0   9:44.32 irq/147-iwlwifi                                                                                      
   1410 root      20   0  427404   4992   3968 S   0,3   0,0   3:00.38 thermald

I know I can use ps -fA | grep python to distinguish python processes and use say ps -fA | grep 160932 to find one of top processes consuming my resources.

But how can I display it right in top? Or how can I get top-equivalent supporting this, preferably some relatively standard tool?

command-line

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can use the c command to toggle between showing the process name and command line. From the manpage:

    COMMAND  --  Command Name or Command Line
   Display  the  command  line  used  to start a task or the name of the associated program.  You toggle
   between command line and name with `c', which is  both  a  command-line  option  and  an  interactive
   command.

    Once you use c to get a desired view, you can have top save this configuration by pressing W. As mentioned above, you can start in the opposite of the saved configuration with top -c (or top --cmdline-toggle).

    • 6

  2. This is more applicable if you're the author of those Python processes, but it's useful enough to mention here anyway.

    With the setproctitle module, you can change the process name of your Python program.

    You just apt install python3-setproctitle or pip install setproctitle or something equivalent, and then:

    import setproctitle
setproctitle.setproctitle('Foo worker')

    And then your process will be easily recognizable in process listings. It's a good idea to do this anyway, because it is useful in many situations, especially unexpected ones ;)

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